Jonas nonchalantly moved a few steps off to the side that took Silvia out of his field of fire. “Thaxton, you left one of your men back at the line shack to kill me. You need to hire more skilled shooters you ambushing son-of-a-bitch. You want the job done you’re gonna have to do it yourself.” Jonas’ eyes, cold and grey bored through him daring him to draw.
Walsh stood transfixed watching Jonas as the tension built. He felt the bone handle of his Bowie knife in his sleeve and let it slide down where his fingers could wrap around it.
Thaxton’s fingers twitched, his eyes open wide with the fear of a condemned man. He desperately wanted to draw but knew in a fair fight he was no match for Jonas. He licked his dry lips. Sweat trickled down the side of his face. Breathing became difficult. He was not used to this kind of situation. Out in the open, gun-to-gun was not his style.
In desperation, Thaxton glanced at his hired gun who got the message and went for his gun. Jonas’ right hand flashed to his holster as his left hand came around palm down and fanned the hammer twice.
Two shots, so close together they sounded as one, found their target before the gunman could bring his pistol level. The heavy .45 slugs propelled him backward. His eyes bulged and his face contorted as he tried to recover and get off a shot, but his legs buckled and he went down. A red stain spread across his chest soaking the front of his coat.
Thaxton took advantage of the split-second distraction and went for his gun, at the same time Walsh’s arm flashed up and catapulted forward as he threw the Bowie knife he had hidden in his sleeve. Sunlight flashed off the polished seven inch blade as it rotated several times before burying itself in Thaxton’s chest.
The impact drove him back a few paces, and he stared down unbelieving at the coffin-shaped hilt sticking out of him. He looked at Silvia, tried to walk toward her and crumpled to the ground, tried to rise but failed. In his last act,, he raised his Colt and fired the same time as Jenny’s Spencer boomed from the barn a fraction of second too late.
The heavy .50 caliber slug impacted behind Thaxton’s shoulder and rolled him over in the dust a couple of times. He came to rest on his back. His pistol fell from dead fingers, eyes wide open in surprise and now fixed in death saw no more and the dry earth eagerly soaked up his life blood.
For a few moments there was silence and shock as those left standing tried to grasp what had just happened. Silvia let out a cry and fell to her knees hands clasped to her chest as blood seeped through her fingers. Jenny ran from the barn screaming, “Mother! Mother! What happened?”
Jonas reached Silvia first and scooped her into his arms. Followed closely by Jenny, they rushed Silvia into the house where Jonas laid her gently on a sofa. He tore open the front of Silvia’s pale blue blouse revealing an ugly bullet wound high up above her shapely breast. The bullet had clipped her lung and exited out the back. She was losing blood fast.
A blood and air mixture bubbled from the wound. Jonas applied a folded cloth tightly over the wound, but knew it was useless. Silvia was conscious but a bloody froth drizzled from her mouth.
Silvia looked at Jenny and clutched her hand. “I’m sorry I caused you so much pain...I needed to tell you the truth about Randal and me...” she coughed up more blood and shuddered as shock set in.
Moments later her breathing became labored then stopped altogether.
Chapter 19
Sheriff Williams walked across the room and slumped down in the doc’s office chair trying to sort out the dying man’s story. He watched Doc Thurston wash his hands and put away his instruments. “Not much I could do for him...poor fellow. He was just too far gone. You talked to him. Did he say who he was...?”
Williams stood up wearily. “He did and managed to give me quite an ear full, enough to shock ticks off a cow. I’ve got to get out to the Crawley ranch pronto. If anyone needs me, I’ll be back as soon as I can. Tell you all about it when I get back.”
Williams made a quick stop at Nellie’s and asked her to make up a couple of sandwiches to take along while he gulped down a mug of coffee. He used penny licorice to bribe one of the waitress’ youngster that was hanging around to run down to the livery and tell Seth to get his horse ready.
Nellie handed him a sack. “You’re sure leaving in a big rush What...?”
Williams interrupted her, “Got to ride out to Crawley’s ranch Tell you all about it later.” He gave her a quick peck on the cheek and fast-walked, spurs jangling down the dusty street to the livery.
Breathing in the pungent smell of sage and rabbit brush while giving his horse free rein had often helped Williams relax from the demands of being sheriff. But not this time; he felt a heavy weight on his shoulders and a job he didn’t look forward to. With reluctance, he let his mount settle into an easy cantor along the rough wagon track that led to the Crawley ranch.
Several hours later and about a quarter mile from the ranch, Williams heard gunshots. He reined in his horse and stood up in the stirrups trying to determine where the shots came from. Then another shot from a big bore rifle reverberated over the sage flats clearly coming from the ranch house.
Williams spurred his horse into a gallop toward the main house while he pulled his Winchester from its scabbard. He jacked a .44-40 round into the chamber and eased the hammer to half-cock – safe but ready for action.
Two bodies lay outstretched on the ground and Jonas was running into the house carrying Silvia with Jenny close behind as Williams galloped into the yard. He reined in his horse so hard it reared back on its haunches and skidded in the dirt.
Williams vaulted from saddle and landed ready to shoot, but it was all over. He trotted over to the two dead men sprawled in the dirt and didn’t recognize either one. He saw Walsh’s Bowie sticking out of one dead man’s chest along with a bullet wound and other one dead from two shots to the chest. Williams studied the scene, committed the details to memory then turned and sprinted to the house.
Silvia was unable to say more as shock and blood loss took their fatal toll. Jonas closed her eyes and covered her with a blanket. He sat for a moment with head in hands then got up and walked out to a corner of the porch. His hands from long habit searched pockets for tobacco makings. Walsh stood awkwardly not knowing what to do or how to comfort Jenny who clung to him sobbing.
Williams bounded up the porch steps. Jonas said nothing, but nodded toward the door his face a mask of pain and anger.
The sheriff took in the covered figure on the sofa and gently put his hand on Jenny’s shoulder trying to give her some comfort. After a few moments he gently steered her toward the door. “Can we go outside and you can tell me what happened?”
Walsh nodded and with his uninjured arm around Jenny walked out onto the porch. She looked at Williams with red rimmed eyes. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here. I wonder if you could have been here sooner you could have stopped Thaxton before...”
Williams stood uncomfortably rotating his hat brim not knowing what to say. Walsh spoke up, his voice cracking with self reproach. “If anyone caused this it was me. My actions led up to this happening. If it weren’t for me...if I hadn’t run none of this would have happened.”
Jonas leaned against the railing and rolled a smoke. He licked the paper edge then flared a match with his thumbnail. Motionless, handling his grief silently, he stared across the sage flats at the mountain peaks on the eastern horizon. His mind replayed the events of the past few minutes. He wondered that if he could have done something differently Silvia would still be alive.
For a few moments no one said anything. Each lost in their own thoughts, grappling with their grief trying to accept the reality of what they had just experienced. Jonas cleared his throat and moved over next to Williams.
Williams suddenly noticed the bloody bandana tied around Jonas’ head. “Looks like you took a beatin’ there.”
“Aw, just a bump an’ a scrape from dealing with one of Thaxton’s men. One thing is sure: he won’t be a hiring out his gun anymore.” Jonas t
ook a drag on his smoke and exhaled slowly. Looking out to the patch of dirt where Silvia was shot, he related the events of the past few days ending with Thaxton bringing Walsh in and shooting Silvia.
Williams said nothing for a few minutes trying to decide what to do next. He put his arm around his niece. “Jenny, we need to give your mom a proper burial and say a few Christian words over her. We don’t know why or how she got mixed up in this. I think she just fell in love with the wrong man. I know she was pretty broken up when your dad was killed and facing the responsibility of a daughter to take care of alone...”
As they struggled to come to grips with the situation, three cowhands rode in from scouring the foothills. They immediately spotted the bodies in the yard and spurred their horses over the porch guns drawn. “What happened here? Need any help?” one of the hands shouted, rifle in hand.
Williams stepped off the porch. “It’s under control, boys. Silvia was killed by a bullet from one of the dead men. I’ll let you know all about it, but first Dugan, I need you to ride over to the Nelson spread and bring Thomas back to read a few words out of the good book.” He shifted his gaze to the other two cowhands. “You two better get started digging two graves out in back of the barn for those two out there. We’ll bury Silvia in the small grassy area by the cottonwood tree next to the other three graves.”
Dugan wheeled his horse around and rode out for the Nelson spread about four miles away. The owner, Thomas Nelson, served as a preacher for the outlaying ranches. No one knew if he ever attended preacher school or had even been ordained. But he knew the Bible like no one else did and that was good enough for most folks, especially those who shied away from the hell-fire and damnation sermons of the circuit preachers.
Walsh and Jenny laid her mother on the dining room table and tried to make her presentable. Judd, the ranch handyman, returned from mending fences and pitched in building a coffin for Silvia. The front porch became a gathering place for everyone to talk about what happened, mourn and try to offer Jenny comfort.
One of the cowhands who helped bury Thaxton and his gun hand, rode up to the porch and handed Walsh his knife, still covered in blood wrapped in a bandana. “Thought ya might want yer knife back. Did a right good job, through the heart like a stuck pig.”
“Obliged. This Bowie has seen too much use lately. Hope this is the last time.” The cowhand grinned, backed his horse away from the porch and trotted off. Walsh unwrapped the knife and stared at it lying in his hand--- the blade again stained by dried blood. He shuddered and felt slightly nauseated while his mind flashed-back to when he pulled the knife from Crawley’s bloody chest. And again the chilling curse pronounced by the old Creole witch doctor haunted him.
An hour and a half later, the Nelsons drove into the yard in a two-horse surrey, the horses hot and lathered from being pushed hard. Judd soon finished a fine coffin from some maple lumber he had on hand for special projects.
Chapter 20
It was a short and simple service. The preacher led everyone singing Onward Christian Soldiers, recited the Lord’s Prayer and then prayed over the grave. Two cowhands lowered the casket into the earth with lariats while Jenny threw a bouquet of white and red hollyhocks on top of it.
Afterward Thomas, the preacher, promised to look in on them in a few days. It was roundup time, and he had to hurry back since he left in the middle of branding and rounding up calves.
Shadows lengthened as the sun sank toward the western horizon. Jenny, Walsh and Williams walked slowly back to the main house each lost in their own thoughts and grief. They found Jonas on the porch rocking back and forth nursing a stiff whisky, his way of cutting down his pain and grief to a manageable size.
Williams pulled up a wooden rocker and motioned Jenny to have a seat. He sat down next to her on a dining chair. “I need to tell you some things I’ve learned about Randal and your mom. I know this ain’t the best time, but we got to get to work pronto on clearing this up.”
Jenny wiped her red eyes on her sleeve and motioned Walsh to come over. He detached himself from talking with a couple of cowhands and stood next to her. She clutched Walsh’s arm in anticipation of bad news.
She’s got a lot of spunk...I hope Walsh and her make a go of it, Williams thought as he leaned forward and studied the black leather braiding of his hatband. After a few seconds he looked up. “Yesterday morning a drummer brought in a fellow some teamsters rescued from a Bannock war party. I got lucky and was able to talk to him just before he died. It appears he was connected with your parents in Nevada before they came to this part of the territory. He said your step-father’s real name was James McCabe. From what I gather, Silvia worked at the time in the US Government’s Carson Mint where she met your step-father about nine or ten years ago.”
“This fellow you talked to, was he supposed to meet Crawley or James McCabe who mistook me for him?” Walsh interrupted.
“It appears so. This fellows name was John Curren and he helped install and run the steam coin minting press at the Carson City mint. In 1870 when the mint first began minting gold coins, McCabe, Silvia and a couple of others melted down and minted a shipment of stolen U.S. Army gold bars into $20 Double Eagles.”
“Where does my mother fit into all this?” asked Jenny shocked and a little numb at what was unfolding.
“From what John Curren said, your mother was a book keeper employed at the mint. Her role in all this was to let McCabe and Curren know when the mint would be vacant so they could slip in and run the stamping machinery.”
Jonas had been listening carefully leaning on the railing asked, “Did this fellow tell you where the gold came from?”
“Curren said McCabe was a lieutenant in the California 2nd regiment cavalry. In 1964, he and six troopers and two teamsters were given orders to transport a $50,000 army gold shipment from San Francisco to Fort Laramie where it would be transported to Independence. Along the way in northeastern Nevada, McCabe’s party was attacked by Shoshones. McCabe was able to hide the gold and escape, but the rest were killed. Years later he and this John Curren went back and retrieved the gold.”
Walsh broke in with a question. “So John Curren was trying to find Crawley or McCabe to get money from him?”
“I think we can assume that. McCabe had no way of knowing that Curren had run into Bannocks, and you just happened to wander into his gunsight at the wrong time. That’s about the way I see it,” Williams concluded. “He must have contacted McCabe that he was coming from Fort Laramie to see him and the quickest route to Henryville is the trail through Dry Bone Gulch.”
Jenny interrupted. “I remember Randal – I mean James – getting a letter a couple of months ago that upset him and Mother. Neither would discuss it with me so I shrugged it off as not too important and forgot about it.”
“Do you think Randal kept that letter?” Williams asked.
“He has an old roll-top desk in the library. We can check that...”
In the library, they found the desk’s bottom right-hand drawer had a brass lock. “If we try to force it open it’ll destroy the drawer. I think I know where the key is,” Jenny said as she turned a small Chinese porcelain vase upside down and the key fell into her palm.
The drawer contained deeds to the properties Randal had acquired the past few years, a few old letters, yellowed Territorial Enterprise clippings from a Carson City newspaper, but not the letter they were looking for. Williams noticed an old iron strong box similar to ones they use on stage coaches in a corner under an old hunting coat. A large brass padlock secured the box.
For a half-hour they scoured the room looking for a key. Jonas moseyed in and joined their search. After about another ten minutes he said, “I know how to how to open that box.” And with a sure fluid motion drew his forty-five and blasted the lock from about four feet away putting a large hole through it. Pieces of metal flew around the room bouncing off the ceiling and walls. Luckily no one was hit.
“Dammit to hell, Jonas. You’re go
ing to kill us all doing that!” Williams shouted.
“Hey, it works for stage robbers,” Jonas replied with a grin.
The destroyed lock hung from the box by its shackle. Jenny, shaken by Jonas’ wild-man-lock-picking, shoved open the lid and gasped. The others crowded around and stared into the box. Nobody said anything for a few seconds. Jenny reached into the box and withdrew a paper roll of twenty gold double eagles. She looked down at the roll then looked around at the others questioningly. “I’ve never seen so much gold before...and there’s a bunch of other rolls here”
“Let me see,” said Walsh as he took the heavy roll of coins from Jenny’s hand. “Wow, this is more gold than in a bank,” he exclaimed staring at the roll as he hefted its weight.
Williams slipped a coin out of its wrapper and held it at arm’s length trying to read the markings. “Getting too old read the small stuff,” he said handing it to Jenny. “Here, you read the markings on the coin.”
“Well, the mint date is 1870.”
“What are the markings on the reverse side?”
Jenny squinted at the coin. “Well, underneath the eagle are two tiny cc markings.”
“That’s what I’m looking for. CC stands for Carson City mint and that tallies with what Curren said before he died. Now here’s the sticky part. If these coins are the ones Randal or McCabe used to buy this ranch are minted from stolen government gold, we’re knee deep in a buffalo wallow. I need to ride over to Silver City and send out some telegrams along with a few letters. I know it may bring down a lot of grief for you, but I don’t have a choice, it’s my duty...I took an oath.”
Ambush at Dry Bone Gulch Page 17